bitmovin-player-react-native

Bitmovin Player React Native

Official React Native bindings for Bitmovin's mobile Player SDKs.

As the library is under active development, this means certain features from our native SDKs are not yet exposed through these React Native bindings.
See Feature Support for an overview of the supported features.

Not seeing the features you’re looking for?
We are accepting community pull requests to this open-source project so please feel free to contribute. or let us know in our community what features we should work on next.

• Bitmovin Player React Native
  • Platform Support
  • Feature Support
  • Installation
    • Add package dependency
    • Setup iOS Player SDK
    • Setup Android Player SDK
  • Getting Started
    • Setting up a license key
      • Through code
      • Through Info.plist
      • Through AndroidManifest.xml
    • Setting up the playback configuration
    • Accessing native Player instances
    • Listening to events
    • Enabling DRM protection
      • Prepare hooks
    • Adding external subtitle tracks
    • Enabling Picture in Picture mode
    • Setting up ads
  • Contributing

Platform Support

This library requires at least React Native 0.64+ and React 17+ to work properly. The currently supported platforms are:

• iOS 12.0+
• tvOS 12.0+
• Android API 16+
• Android TV API 17+
• Fire TV (just make sure the Android API level is at least 17+)

Please note that browsers and other browser-like environments such as webOS and Tizen are not supported.

Feature Support

Features of the native mobile Player SDKs are progressively being implemented in this React Native library. The table below summarizes the current state of the main Player SDK features.

Feature	State
Playback of DRM-protected assets	:white_check_mark: Available since v0.2.0
Subtitles & Captions	:white_check_mark: Available since v0.2.0
Advertising	:gear: In progress, Q4 2022
Playlist API	:x: Not available
Offline Playback	:x: Not available
Analytics	:x: Coming Q1 2023

Installation

Since Bitmovin's native SDKs are distributed through custom Cocoapods and Maven repositories, the installation cannot be managed by React Native's Autolink and requires some extra steps. Please refer to the installation instructions for each platform below. For more information on integrating the native SDKs, refer to the Getting Started guides.

Add package dependency

This library is available as an NPM package and may be added as a dependency to your project using any node-based package manager, e.g.

npm

npm install bitmovin-player-react-native --save

yarn

yarn add bitmovin-player-react-native

Setup iOS Player SDK

If you ran pod install after installing the node package and received an error similar to the one below, it is because Bitmovin's custom cocoapods repository has not been added to the Podfile and the iOS Player SDK could not be resolved:

[!] Unable to find a specification for `BitmovinPlayer (= 3.xx.x)` depended upon by `RNBitmovinPlayer`

You have either:
 * out-of-date source repos which you can update with `pod repo update` or with `pod install --repo-update`.
 * mistyped the name or version.
 * not added the source repo that hosts the Podspec to your Podfile.

To fix above error, open your ios/Podfile and set up Bitmovin's pods source url:

require_relative '../node_modules/react-native/scripts/react_native_pods'
require_relative '../node_modules/@react-native-community/cli-platform-ios/native_modules'

# Bitmovin pods source url
source 'https://github.com/bitmovin/cocoapod-specs.git'

# iOS version should be 12 or greater.
# If you are running RN 0.69 you should be fine already.
platform :ios, '12.4'
install! 'cocoapods', :deterministic_uuids => false

target 'MyApp' do
  config = use_native_modules!

  # Rest of Podfile...

Now run pod install again (try with --repo-update if the error persists) - the error should now be resolved.

Setup Android Player SDK

The Android setup also needs an extra step in order to correctly resolve the Android Player SDK native dependency.

Just make sure to add Bitmovin's artifacts repository to the allprojects.repositories section of your android/build.gradle:

allprojects {
    repositories {
        maven { url("$rootDir/../node_modules/react-native/android") }
        maven { url("$rootDir/../node_modules/jsc-android/dist") }
        mavenCentral {
            content {
                excludeGroup "com.facebook.react"
            }
        }
        google()
        maven { url 'https://www.jitpack.io' }
        // Add Bitmovin's artifacts repository url
        maven { url 'https://artifacts.bitmovin.com/artifactory/public-releases' }
    }
}

Getting Started

The following is the simplest working component one can create using this library:

import React, { useEffect, useCallback } from 'react';
import { View, Platform, StyleSheet } from 'react-native';
import {
  usePlayer,
  SourceType,
  PlayerView,
} from 'bitmovin-player-react-native';

export default function PlayerSample() {
  // The `usePlayer` hook creates or references a certain native `Player`
  // instance from within any component.
  const player = usePlayer({
    // The only required parameter is the license key but it can be omitted from code upon correct
    // Info.plist/AndroidManifest.xml configuration.
    //
    // Head to `Setting up a license key` for more information.
    licenseKey: '<ENTER-YOUR-LICENSE-KEY>',
  });

  useEffect(() => {
    // Load a streamable video source during component's initialization.
    player.load({
      // Select url and type dependeding on the running platform.
      url:
        Platform.OS === 'ios'
          ? // HLS for iOS
            'https://bitmovin-a.akamaihd.net/content/MI201109210084_1/m3u8s/f08e80da-bf1d-4e3d-8899-f0f6155f6efa.m3u8'
          : // Dash for Android
            'https://bitmovin-a.akamaihd.net/content/MI201109210084_1/mpds/f08e80da-bf1d-4e3d-8899-f0f6155f6efa.mpd',
      type: Platform.OS === 'ios' ? SourceType.HLS : SourceType.DASH,
      // Optionally set a title that will appear at player's top-left corner.
      title: 'Art of Motion',
      // Optionally load a poster image over the player.
      poster:
        'https://bitmovin-a.akamaihd.net/content/MI201109210084_1/poster.jpg',
      // Optionally set whether poster image will persist over player.
      // Useful for audio-only streams. Default to false.
      isPosterPersistent: false,
    });
  }, [player]);

  // onReady is called when the player has downloaded initial
  // video and audio and is ready to start playback.
  const onReady = useCallback(
    (event) => {
      // Start playback
      player.play();
      // Print event timestamp
      console.log(event.timestamp);
    },
    [player]
  );

  // Make sure to pass the `player` prop in `PlayerView`.
  return (
    <View style={styles.flex1}>
      <PlayerView style={styles.flex1} player={player} onReady={onReady} />
    </View>
  );
}

const styles = StyleSheet.create({
  flex1: {
    flex: 1,
  },
});

If you're interested in a complete running example, head to example/.

Setting up a license key

First of all, create a license key on the Dashboard and then make sure to associate your iOS app bundle id with it (see more here).

Then your license key can be either set from code or by configuring Info.plist and AndroidManifest.xml.

Through code

// Simply pass the `licenseKey` property to `PlayerConfig` when instantiating a player.

// With hooks
import { usePlayer } from 'bitmovin-player-react-native';
const player = usePlayer({
  licenseKey: '<ENTER-YOUR-LICENSE-KEY>',
});

// Without hooks
import { Player } from 'bitmovin-player-react-native';
const player = new Player({
  // Make sure to use React.createRef if instantiating inside a component.
  licenseKey: '<ENTER-YOUR-LICENSE-KEY>',
});

Through Info.plist

Add the following lines to the <dict> section of your ios/Info.plist:

<key>BitmovinPlayerLicenseKey</key>
<string>ENTER-YOUR-LICENSE-KEY</string>

Through AndroidManifest.xml

Add the following line to the <application> section of your android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml:

<meta-data android:name="BITMOVIN_PLAYER_LICENSE_KEY" android:value="ENTER-YOUR-LICENSE-KEY" />

Setting up the playback configuration

If needed, the default player behavior can be configured through the playbackConfig key when initialized.

// Simply pass the `playbackConfig` property to `PlayerConfig` when instantiating a player.

// With hooks
import { usePlayer } from 'bitmovin-player-react-native';
const player = usePlayer({
  playbackConfig: {
    // Specifies whether the playback starts immediately after loading a source or not. Default is false.
    isAutoplayEnabled: true,
    // Specifies if playback starts muted. Default is false.
    isMuted: true,
    // Specifies if time shift for live streams should be enabled. Default is true.
    isTimeShiftEnabled: true,
    // Whether background playback is enabled or not. Default is false.
    // Only available for iOS.
    isBackgroundPlaybackEnabled: true,
    // Enable the Picture in Picture mode option on the player controls.
    //
    // Note iOS requires the audio session category of your app to be set to `playback` otherwise
    // PiP mode won't work.
    //
    // Check out `Enabling Picture in Picture mode` section of README for more information
    // on how to properly configure your app to support PiP.
    isPictureInPictureEnabled: true,
  },
});

// Without hooks
import { Player } from 'bitmovin-player-react-native';
const player = new Player({
  // Make sure to use React.createRef if instantiating inside a component.
  playbackConfig: {
    isAutoplayEnabled: true,
    isMuted: true,
    isTimeShiftEnabled: true,
    isBackgroundPlaybackEnabled: true,
    isPictureInPictureEnabled: true,
  },
});

Accessing native Player instances

When you instantiate a player with usePlayer or new Player() from javascript, you're actually either creating a new Player instance in the native side (see SDKs docs for more info) or referencing an existing one.

So it means that a player with the same nativeId in two different parts of the code is referencing the same in-memory instance internally.

Example

Both components in the example below are referencing the same native Player indexed as my-player. And even though each <PlayerView /> creates a different View internally, the Player instance (which is a separate thing) remains the same. It just gets attached to a different view.

// Using `usePlayer`
export const CompA = () => {
  // Same `player` as in `CompB`.
  const player = usePlayer({
    nativeId: 'my-player',
  });
  return <PlayerView player={player} />;
};

// Using `new Player()`
export const CompB = () => {
  // Same `player` as in `CompA`.
  const player = useRef(
    new Player({
      nativeId: 'my-player',
    })
  );
  return <PlayerView player={player.current} />;
};

Listening to events

Both player and source events can be registered from PlayerView, but not all of them. For a complete list of the events currently available, checkout EventProps and events.ts.

To register an event callback, just pass its name prefixed with on as a PlayerView prop:

return (
  <PlayerView
    onReady={onReady}
    onMuted={onMuted}
    onPaused={onPaused}
    onPlayerActive={onPlayerActive}
    onSourceLoaded={onSourceLoaded}
    onPlayerError={onPlayerError}
    onSourceError={onSourceError}
    onPlaybackFinished={onPlaybackFinished}
    {...}
  />
);

Enabling DRM protection

⚠️ Beta Version: For now, only FairPlay is supported on iOS and only Widevine is supported on Android. More DRM systems will be added in the future.

Simple streaming of protected assets can be enabled with just a little configuration on SourceConfig.drmConfig:

import { Platform } from 'react-native';
import { SourceConfig, SourceType } from 'bitmovin-player-react-native';

// Source configuration for protected assets.
const drmSource: SourceConfig = {
  // Protected stream URL.
  url:
    Platform.OS === 'ios'
      ? 'https://fps.ezdrm.com/demo/video/ezdrm.m3u8' // iOS stream url
      : 'https://bitmovin-a.akamaihd.net/content/art-of-motion_drm/mpds/11331.mpd', // Android stream url
  // Stream type.
  type: Platform.OS === 'ios' ? SourceType.HLS : SourceType.DASH,
  // DRM setup.
  // Each key in this object maps to a different DRM system config (`widevine` or `fairplay`).
  drmConfig: {
    // Widevine is the default and only DRM system supported on Android for now.
    widevine: {
      licenseUrl: 'https://cwip-shaka-proxy.appspot.com/no_auth',
    },
    // FairPlay is the default and only DRM system supported on iOS for now.
    fairplay: {
      licenseUrl:
        'https://fps.ezdrm.com/api/licenses/09cc0377-6dd4-40cb-b09d-b582236e70fe',
      certificateUrl: 'https://fps.ezdrm.com/demo/video/eleisure.cer',
    },
  },
};

Prepare hooks

In the native SDKs, some DRM properties like message and license can have their value transformed before use in order to enable some more complex use cases: such as extracting the license from a JSON, for example.

In order to handle such transformations, it's possible to hook methods onto SourceConfig.drmConfig to proxy DRM values and potentially alter them:

import { Platform } from 'react-native';
import { SourceConfig, SourceType } from 'bitmovin-player-react-native';

// Source configuration for protected assets.
const drmSource: SourceConfig = {
  // Protected stream URL.
  url:
    Platform.OS === 'ios'
      ? 'https://fps.ezdrm.com/demo/video/ezdrm.m3u8' // iOS stream url
      : 'https://bitmovin-a.akamaihd.net/content/art-of-motion_drm/mpds/11331.mpd', // Android stream url
  // Stream type.
  type: Platform.OS === 'ios' ? SourceType.HLS : SourceType.DASH,
  // DRM setup.
  drmConfig: {
    // Widevine is the default and only DRM system supported on Android for now.
    widevine: {
      licenseUrl: 'https://cwip-shaka-proxy.appspot.com/no_auth',
      // Data is passed as a base64 string and expects to return a base64 string.
      prepareLicense: (license: string) => {
        // Do something with the `license` value...
        // And return processed data as base64 string.
        return license; // base64 string
      },
    },
    // FairPlay is the default and only DRM system supported on iOS for now.
    fairplay: {
      licenseUrl:
        'https://fps.ezdrm.com/api/licenses/09cc0377-6dd4-40cb-b09d-b582236e70fe',
      certificateUrl: 'https://fps.ezdrm.com/demo/video/eleisure.cer',
      // Data is passed as a base64 string and expects to return a base64 string.
      prepareLicense: (license: string) => {
        // Do something with the `license` value...
        // And return processed data as base64 string.
        return license; // base64 string
      },
      // Data is passed as a base64 string and expects to return a base64 string.
      prepareMessage: (message: string, assetId: string) => {
        // Do something with the `assetId` and `message` values...
        // And return processed data as base64 string.
        return message; // base64 string
      },
    },
  },
};

The FairplayConfig interface provides a bunch of hooks that can be used to fetch and transform different DRM related data. Check out the docs for a complete list and detailed information on them.

Also, don't forget to check out the example app for a complete iOS/Android DRM example.

Adding external subtitle tracks

Usually, subtitle tracks are provided in the manifest of your content (see Enconding Manifests API for more information). And if they are provided this way, the player already recognizes them and show them in the subtitles selection menu without any further configuration.

Otherwise, it's also possible to add external tracks via the subtitle API:

import { Platform } from 'react-native';
import {
  SourceConfig,
  SourceType,
  SubtitleFormat,
} from 'bitmovin-player-react-native';

// Source config with an external subtitle track.
const config: SourceConfig = {
  url:
    Platform.OS === 'ios'
      ? 'https://bitmovin-a.akamaihd.net/content/sintel/hls/playlist.m3u8'
      : 'https://bitmovin-a.akamaihd.net/content/sintel/sintel.mpd',
  type: Platform.OS === 'ios' ? SourceType.HLS : SourceType.DASH,
  poster: 'https://bitmovin-a.akamaihd.net/content/sintel/poster.png',
  // External subtitle tracks list to be added to this source.
  subtitleTracks: [
    // You can select 'Custom English' in the subtitles menu.
    {
      // The URL of the subtitle file. Required.
      url: 'https://bitdash-a.akamaihd.net/content/sintel/subtitles/subtitles_en.vtt',
      // External file format.
      // Supports `.vtt`, `.ttml` and `.cea` extensions.
      //
      // This option can be left empty since the player automatically recognizes the format
      // from the provided url most of the time.
      format: SubtitleFormat.VTT,
      // Label for this track shown under the selection menu. Required.
      label: 'Custom English',
      // The IETF BCP 47 language tag associated with this track. Required.
      language: 'en',
      // The unique identifier used for this track.
      // The default value for this options is a randomly generated UUID.
      identifier: 'sub1',
      // This track is considered the default if set to `true`.
      // The default value for this option is `false`.
      isDefault: false,
      // If set to `true` it means that the player should automatically select and switch this
      // subtitle according to the selected audio language. Forced subtitles do not appear in
      // `Player.getAvailableSubtitles`.
      //
      // The default value for this option is `false`.
      isForced: false,
    },
    // You may add even more tracks to the list...
  ],
};

The supported PlayerView events for subtitles are:

• onSubtitleAdded
• onSubtitleRemoved
• onSubtitleChanged

You might check out a complete subtitle example in the example/ app.

Enabling Picture in Picture mode

In order to make use of the Picture in Picture functionalities provided by the player, it's first necessary to configure your native application to properly support PiP.

The steps required for each platform are described below:

Android

Declare Picture in Picture support on AndroidManifest.xml

Open android/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml and set android:supportsPictureInPicture to true on your main activity's manifest. Also, specify that your activity handles layout configuration changes so that your activity doesn't relaunch when layout changes occur during PiP mode transitions:

<activity android:name=".MainActivity"
    android:supportsPictureInPicture="true"
    android:configChanges=
        "screenSize|smallestScreenSize|screenLayout|orientation"
    ...

iOS

Set background modes capability

Make sure to add the UIBackgroundModes key to the dict section of your Info.plist:

<key>UIBackgroundModes</key>
<array>
  <string>audio</string>
</array>

This step can also be performed from Xcode.

Configure audio session on app startup

Configure your app's AudioSession category to playback during the main component's initialization:

import { AudioSession } from 'bitmovin-player-react-native';

// App's root component
const App = () => {
  useEffect(() => {
    // Set your app's `AudioSession` category to `playback` on initialization.
    // Please, note even though this step is required for iOS it won't take any effect on Android.
    AudioSession.setCategory('playback').catch((error) => {
      // Handle any native error that might occur during this process.
      handleError(error);
    });
  });
  // ...
  return /* ... */;
};

This step is required in order to properly enable background playback on iOS. Without it, the Picture in Picture option appears on the player UI but has no effect when used.

You can read more about it on Apple's docs.

Showing the Picture in Picture UI option

Now that your native application is properly configured to support PiP changes, the player instance in your JS code can be configured to show the Picture in Picture option in the player UI.

Simply add isPictureInPictureEnabled: true on your player's playbackConfig option:

const player = usePlayer({
  playbackConfig: {
    isPictureInPictureEnabled: true,
  },
});

Supported Picture in Picture events

The supported Picture in Picture events on PlayerView are:

• onPictureInPictureEnter
• onPictureInPictureExit

iOS only

• onPictureInPictureEntered
• onPictureInPictureExited

Android only

• onPictureInPictureAvailabilityChanged

Check events.ts for more information about them.

Setting up ads

The Bitmovin Player SDKs are capable of displaying Ads out of the box and there are two ways they can be configured with the player. One option is to use static configuration in the player config object, and the other is to schedule them dynamically using Player.scheduleAd.

Static ads configuration

The easiest way to configure Ads is by adding the advertisingConfig property to the player configuration object. All that needs to be provided is a URL pointing to a target Ad tag along with the type of the tag.

const player = usePlayer({
  licenseKey: '<PLAYER_LICENSE_KEY>',
  advertisingConfig: {
    // Each object in `schedule` represents an `AdItem`.
    schedule: [
      // An `AdItem` represents a time slot within the streamed content dedicated to ads playback.
      {
        // Each item specifies a list of sources with a type and URL to the ad manifest in the ads
        // server. All but the first source act as fallback if the first one fails to load.
        // The start and end of an ad break are signaled via `AdBreakStartedEvent` and `AdBreakFinishedEvent`.
        sources: [
          {
            type: AdSourceType.IMA,
            tag: 'https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ads?sz=640x480&iu=/124319096/external/single_ad_samples&ciu_szs=300x250&impl=s&gdfp_req=1&env=vp&output=vast&unviewed_position_start=1&cust_params=deployment%3Ddevsite%26sample_ct%3Dskippablelinear&correlator=',
          },
          // Fallback sources...
        ],
        // Each item also specifies the position where it should appear during playback.
        // The possible position values are documented below.
        // The default value is `pre`.
        position: '20%',
      },
    ],
  },
});

The possible AdItem position values are:

• "pre": pre-roll ad (for VoD and Live streaming; appears before playback starts)
• "post": post-roll ad (for VoD streaming only; appears after playback finishes)
• Fractional seconds: "10", "12.5" (mid-roll ad, for VoD and Live streaming)
• Percentage of the entire video duration: "25%", "50%" (mid-roll ad, for VoD streaming only)
• Timecode hh:mm:ss.mmm: "00:10:30.000", "01:00:00.000" (mid-roll ad, for VoD streaming only)

Dynamic ads scheduling

To gain more flexibility, it is also possible to schedule an AdItem dynamically in code using the Player instance. To do this, you need to call the scheduleAd method.

// The object passed to `scheduleAd` must be an `AdItem`.
player.scheduleAd({
  // Ad source with fallbacks.
  sources: [
    {
      tag: '<AD-URL>',
      type: AdSourceType.IMA,
    },
  ],
});

An AdScheduledEvent event is dispatched when the ad is successfully scheduled via scheduleAd.

Also, during playback, it's also possible to check whether an ad is being played with player.isAd() and skip the ad being currently played with player.skipAd() (see AdSkippedEvent).

Supported ads events

The supported PlayerView events for ads are:

• onAdBreakFinished
• onAdBreakStarted
• onAdClicked
• onAdError
• onAdFinished
• onAdManifestLoad
• onAdManifestLoaded
• onAdQuartile
• onAdScheduled
• onAdSkipped
• onAdStarted

You can check out a complete ads example in the example/ app.

Contributing

See the contributing guide to learn how to contribute to the repository and the development workflow.

Changelog

[0.4.0] - 2022-11-24

This version introduces the advertising API, full Picture in Picture support and exposes Stall events.

Added

• Advertising API support.
• Complete Picture in Picture support.
• onStallStarted/onStallEnded events support. (Thanks to @joornby-angel)